BetaNews.Com (14 non lus)

There was once a time where most smartphones had hardware keyboards. There were BlackBerry and Palm Treo devices that were an absolute joy to type on. Apple's iPhone wasn't the first smartphone to forgo a physical keyboard entirely, but it is responsible for popularizing it. As a result, Palm and BlackBerry lost almost all of their marketshare, ultimately becoming a footnote in smartphone history. And now, most smartphones are touchscreen-only for typing. While BlackBerry no longer makes smartphones, it does license its name to a company called TCL which makes Android devices that carry the branding -- and sometimes, a… [Continue Reading]

ZTE has been persona non grata in the US for some time now, with the Trump administration having slapped a Denial Order on the company preventing it from operating in North America. The president expressed a desire to get the Chinese firm "back into business" and today that is a step closer to happening. Today the US Department of Commerce has come to an agreement with the company, which will pay a $1 billion fine for violating sanctions. In addition, ZTE will make changes to management, and put a further $400 million in escrow to cover possible future fines. See… [Continue Reading]

For many in the USA, having access to the internet is a given -- we don't give it a second thought. When you are home, you have broadband and Wi-Fi, and when out and about, your smartphone has LTE. In other countries, however, access to the internet isn't as ubiquitous. India, for instance, has many locations where getting online is a hardship. Google has been looking to change this with its "Next Billion Users" initiative, and one of its projects -- "Google Station" -- has seen tremendous growth. You see, the search giant has been gradually adding free Wi-Fi hotspots… [Continue Reading]

Using one of four common attack vectors, 71 percent of surveyed IT professionals believe they could successfully hack any organization. Based on a survey carried out among attendees to the RSA Conference in April 2018 by vulnerability management specialist Outpost24, 34 percent say that they would use social engineering, 23 percent say they would enter via insecure web applications, 21 percent via mobile devices, while a further 21 percent say they would enter via a public cloud. "Our study shows how confident IT professionals are that most of today's organizations are not as secure as they might believe, and will… [Continue Reading]

With just days until the 2018 FIFA World Cup kicks off in Russia, Google is rolling out a series of tools to help football fans keep track of what's going on. A range of Google services -- Search, News, Assistant, Trends and more -- have been updated with World Cup-specific bits and pieces to help enhance your enjoyment of the tournament. From match streams and detailed reports to behind-the-scenes footage and tips about where you can watch games, there's something for every fan here. During the World Cup, Google Search can be used to keep track of group tables, stats… [Continue Reading]

Starting next year, Amazon Prime subscribers in the UK will be able to stream some Premier League matches. The company has won the right to show 20 games per season between 2019 and 2022. The online retailer managed to muscle in on territory dominated by BT and Sky to secure the right to show all 10 Boxing Day matches, as well as the first round of mid-week fixtures. See also: Amazon Echo secretly records couple's conversation... and then sends it on to a contact Amazon Fire TV Cube puts Alexa in control of your home entertainment Amazon brings Alexa to… [Continue Reading]

As more systems move to the cloud, companies often struggle with factors like costs and incident response due to a lack of visibility. Operations management platform OpsRamp is launching an update to its SaaS platform that delivers greater visibility for multi-cloud environments and features a new Artificial Intelligence for IT Operations (AIOps) inference engine for more powerful alerting and event correlation. OpsRamp 5.0 features dashboard widgets that show the geographical distribution of IT assets across datacenter and cloud environments; public cloud spend to date, with a breakdown by cloud account, by custom attributes, and other criteria; and public cloud cost… [Continue Reading]

AI is, of course, one of the latest big buzzwords in the tech industry, but here’s something new: Norman, the world’s first "psychopathic" artificial intelligence, as concocted by researchers at MIT. So, you might wonder, how do you make a psychopath in the world of machine learning? Simple -- you pack the AI in question off for a vacation on Reddit. Or the "darkest corners" of Reddit, as the MIT researchers put it. Norman -- who is, obviously enough, named after the character from the film (and more recently the TV series) Psycho -- is really an exercise in how an… [Continue Reading]

It was only a matter of time before Amazon properly combined two of its biggest home grown product lines -- Fire TV and Amazon Echo -- and today we get to see what the end result looks like. Amazon Fire TV Cube is a hands-free 4K Ultra HD streaming media player with Alexa built in, allowing you to control your TV from across the room. You can use your voice to play, pause, and resume content, but that’s not all. In addition, you can control your compatible TV, sound bar, A/V receiver, and cable or satellite box, turn your TV… [Continue Reading]

Cybercriminals are increasingly using the dark web to facilitate cryptocurrency theft on a large scale, according to cybersecurity company Carbon Black. The company’s research has uncovered a total of $1.1 billion in cryptocurrency-related thefts during the past six months and finds there are currently an estimated 12,000 dark web marketplaces selling approximately 34,000 offerings related to crypto theft. These vary widely in price, from as low as $1.04, to as high as $1,000 per offering. The average listing price was $224, while the 'sweet spot' for pricing was around $10. The listings are keen to promote the simplicity of using… [Continue Reading]

As we enter the summer people start to go away on vacations and visit sporting events like this year's World Cup in Russia, potentially exposing their digital devices and data to extra risks. VPN advice service vpnMentor has produced a report looking at the particular risks travelers face and how they can protect themselves. The biggest hazard comes from public Wi-Fi which leaves data open to interception. The report recommends avoiding the use of public Wi-Fi if you can, or if you have to use it do so through a VPN service. It also warns about copycat access points that masquerade… [Continue Reading]

Everybody needs a backup -- with ransomware added to the list of threats to your data, now is the perfect time to take full advantage of our first BetaNews full software giveaway: O&O DiskImage 11 Professional, worth $49.95, this Thursday (June 7). What makes O&O DiskImage 11 special is that it enables you to back up both individual files and folders as well as take a full drive image, so you can protect key data alongside your fail-safe drive image covering your entire Windows installation -- all from one application. The program is simple to use -- the main user… [Continue Reading]

It's just a couple of weeks since we first heard about the VPNFilter malware. Linked to Russia, the malware hit 500,000 routers around the world, but now Cisco's Talos security researchers are warning that the problem is much worse than anyone thought. Initially thought to only affect SOHO routers and storage devices from Linksys, MikroTik, Netgear, TP-Link, and QNAP , the at-risk list has been extended to include consumer-grade routers from Linksys, MikroTik, Netgear and TP-Link. Researchers have also discovered that the malware is more powerful than initial assessments suggested -- it is now known to be able to bypass… [Continue Reading]

Gmail is a great tool for personal email, but for business, not so much. Don't get me wrong, some organizations use it with great success, but overall, it is a bit weak. If you are a professional that uses Gmail, please know there is a really cool tool to enhance the service -- Mixmax. If you aren't familiar, Mixmax leverages a special Chrome plugin to breathe new life into Google's email service -- we reported on it back in 2015. It lets you do things like track email engagement, more easily schedule meetings, and embed presentations, to name a few.… [Continue Reading]